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America's home for home loans, 866-569-4711. That's 866-569-4711. Or visit americanfinancing.net slash walsh. So for a couple of years now on the show, we've been tracking the issue of flight safety, the airline industry, all the issues in the airline industry. And a couple of days ago, we did a show about air traffic control in particular. And we know about DEI in the airline industry and what's happened there. We know about we've got planes falling apart in the skies, doors falling off and all that sort of thing. So there are the issues in the cockpit. There are the issues with how the planes are being assembled. But maybe most concerning of all, it's air traffic control because these are the people who we are relying on to, while we're all in the air, we're at their mercy. And they're going to be the ones who are first-line of defense to stop us from having a mid-air collision. And we know what happens as we've seen, tragedy strikes when that job is not done in a satisfactory way. So we talked about that recently. A lot of comments from people in this industry or around it. And I think the takeaway from these comments, as always, is that if you're kind of depressed based on what you heard on my show, it's actually way worse than that. I'm an underrated optimist, actually, it turns out, because when you start reading the comments, it's always like, yeah, it's that bad, but it's so much worse. So we'll go through some of these comments now. My son scored 98th percentile on air traffic control testing, flu and perfectly handled aircraft, far above required in the simulators, ATC job. Nope. All that education and training for nothing. Told by one of the instructors, Obama wanted them black and low income. Thanks, Obama. That is still shocking to hear. I mean, it's not surprising at one level, but it's also shocking to hear. And if you didn't have this context, you might hear that and say, and be skeptical. I know this is just a comment. I mean, I don't know. But one of the instructors would actually say out loud, well, no, we, yeah, you scored 98th percentile, but we need, we need, we're looking for someone who's black. You almost want to be skeptical of that. Cause that's not, it's so on the nose. Well, they actually say that out loud, but what we've seen is that, yes, when we've discussed the, in general, the discrimination against white men, that this is something that they're being directly told. This is a real thing. It's another comment. I had an alarming encounter with an ATC while on vacation in Cancun last December. He's an ATC in New York and said it's difficult for him not to crash Air Force One whenever it's in his airspace. The guy was unhinged and unstable. And yes, that is very much in line with what we've talked about on the show. If you go to the ATC subreddit and you're going to find people making comments like this, and you would like to say that politics don't matter. I mean, at least they shouldn't. No one is saying that, well, we can only have conservatives who are in the airline industry or work in air traffic control. Not maybe I'd prefer that. I mean, that'd be nice, but obviously that's not attainable. But the problem is that especially these days, leftists in general are so unhinged, so unstable as you say, and are so convinced that if you disagree with them, that you are a clear and present danger to them and to the country, and you know, you're Hitler incarnate and all this kind of stuff, which gives them a moral justification in their own minds to kill you. So that's really disturbing to hear. If you think the air traffic controller subreddit is bad, the teacher one will really surprise you. I'm 100% serious when I say I pulled all my children from public school last year after I spent some time on that subreddit. I've seen some of that and I don't have my kids in public school. And I don't really need to be convinced that public school is bad. You know, I'm the last guy in the country who needs to be convinced of that. But yes, I can confirm. And I'll tell you, it's kind of in both ways. It's kind of on two levels because if you go and you listen what teachers are saying in a place where they can speak anonymously, then yeah, you'll see many comments that make you concerned about the quality of the teachers, but you'll also see they're talking about, in many cases, they're complaining more openly and more freely because they're anonymous about what's happening in their classroom, about the quality of the students and the kids and what's happening there. And that to me is the far more depressing fact because if you've got a problem with the quality of the teachers, well, in theory, that's fixable. You can hire better teachers. But one thing I see, and I hear this too from teachers in my own personal life who I've talked to, again, where they can speak off the record and they'll tell you it is so much worse than you even think. However bad you think it is, it is so much worse. Like you've got kids in these classes who cannot understand anything. Like they just can't pay attention. They can't, they can't pay attention or understand anything you're telling them. Even if you can get them to put the phones down, which is hard enough, but it's just like you're talking to a wall and yet teachers have always struggled with that with some kids, but now it's like the whole class. This episode is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Your online activity isn't private. Data brokers track your habits, beliefs and spending. They legally sell that information. Corporations use it to target ads, platforms, manipulate what you see and during elections, it can be used to sway your vote. 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Find out how you can get four months free by scanning the QR code on screen, click the link in the description box below or by going to expressvpn.com slash walsh yt. I went through training to be ATC in the Air Force back in 2001, ended up switching to airfield management, toxic environment, a lot of people very full of themselves. We had a situation, the tower were more senior people that were rated, would not talk to anyone who wasn't. It made things very uncomfortable. I could go on and on though. Well, I forgot the biggest scandal. We had three guys get discharged for testing positive for weed. Dear God. That one almost shut the airfield down because there weren't enough controllers left. Yeah, well, you mentioned another factor here that I think an underrated factor with the proliferation of marijuana, everybody's high all the time, everyone's smoking weed. It's totally acceptable, it's legal in a lot of places now and most places it seems like. Yeah, so it's not hard to believe at all that you've got more and more people sitting in control towers at the airport who are stoned out of their minds. I'm not just a helicopter and fixed wing pilot. I work for the FAA as an airway transportation system specialist in the Department of Defense. I also flew this airspace before. I flew this exact helicopter a day and night. The helicopter pilot was to remain below 200 feet, not at 200 feet. Had she been down at 100 feet where every other normal helicopter pilot would be, it would have been a close encounter, but not swapping paint. I personally looked up into the wheel well of a B-757 flying there. As for controllers, it isn't just controllers. No one wanted to remain working at the FAA under Obama. People were retiring as soon as they could. This was an extreme contrast. When I worked for the FAA, we couldn't get people to retire. I was working with one guy that was at the FAA when it was the Civil Aviation Authority before World War II. Under Obama and Biden, they were leaving as fast as they could. Another comment says, add to this the fact that black ATCs are providing the test answers to other blacks in an effort to promote their culture in the tower. At this point, I'd rather drive than have to deal with the changes and dangers associated with flying. Yeah, that's certainly how I feel. I drive whenever I can, but it's very often not possible. For what I do for a living, what a lot of people do, you have to fly. It's like you can't abandon it entirely. And it is the thing with any technology. The more that people use it, the more dependent you get on it. Because air travel has been so ubiquitous for so long, it's people have just spread out more and people are working remote more now and all of these different things, which means that we rely on airplanes like never before. And so you can't just cut it out of your life entirely or it'd be very difficult to. And this comment says, I've been with the post office for nearly a decade. Everything you described about air traffic controllers and how their union protects their God-awful behavior applies to letter carriers as well. Very similar situation. I've seen people keep their jobs after doing some of the craziest, unprofessional things you can imagine, things that would get you fired from other non-union jobs in about 10 seconds. It drives me crazy as somebody who shows up every day and cares and has to pick up the slack of these losers. And I realize the air traffic control is a bit more serious than delivering mail, but the union protection for both hits everybody. Yeah, it's a very, it's a really funny thing when you take accountability out of it, when you protect people from accountability, when you protect people from the consequences for their actions, when you protect people against the consequences of bad behavior, you get more bad behavior. This is like basic human psychology. And we're seeing that play out in many industries. So if you have to travel around the holidays, now you have this information you can take with you. So I don't know what to say, pack a parachute or something.
